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Dig for victory Harry...

Dear Marina,

Thanks to the effects of global warming we are all having a terrible wet and unsummery summer. Is it worth planning summer holidays in November time now and, if so, where would make a good destination?Clare, Portsmouth

I am on record as taking umbrage with those who would say climate change is great if it means it’s getting warmer.

Not that many are saying that right now. And if you’ve had your home or business flooded, with all the stress and devastation that brings, you will rightly be angry beyond words at this summer’s torrents.

But can the rest of us address our attitude to rain please? If it is climate change that brings the monsoon season to Blighty, we can change our ways and help slow climate change and learn to live with the changes in the meantime.

Having always holidayed in England I was brought up never to allow the weather to dampen holiday spirits.

I cherish the hours of childhood spent stuck in a car, chomping on fish and chips, windows all steamed up, listening to the sound of rain lash the north Norfolk coast.

I still laugh at my mother who encouraged us to remove our clothes and sit on them when caught in a downpour without waterproofs.

But most of all I cherish summer rain for the sensual experience beyond the wildest imaginings of those whose only outdoor experience is the distance between their front door and their car, plus the annual trip to a foreign swimming pool with food and drinks included, where they read a book, get drunk and shagged before returning home hungover, diseased and burned to a crisp. And that’s just the pensioners…

Next time the heavens open strip off and give yourself over to the pounding on your naked flesh. Spread your arms, lift your face to the heavens, open your mouth and drink.

If your heart races off into ecstacy and you’re without a loved one to cling to in such a delicious deluge, hug a tree. Easy now, I said hug it.

Rain also plays intricately with light on the landscape. I’m no artist, but I do appreciate the way many places can look more beautiful, and have more character on rainy days as opposed to hot dusty ones. Sites popular with visitors are also less crowded in unsettled weather. No queues for ice cream. Bliss.

But where to holiday? I love the Lake District, the Peak district, Somerset, Cornwall, Devon, Norfolk and Sussex. DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT FLY TO FOREIGN CLIMES.

And when? According to the long range lunar forecast (I kid you not) we’re in for a dry September. This is good news for me as I’m running my first three-day festival (outoftheordinaryfestival.com). If you can get to Polegate Station in Sussex lift shares can get you to our site. Tickets are selling fast so get buying now.

Dear Marina

Despite being a babe magnet with endless squillions of pounds to my name and a noble ancestery, I’m constantly bullied by my colleagues for having red hair. When I was unable to join them for a tour of duty in Iraq they all went out and bought red wigs. I guess this could be to fool the insurgents who will give away their positions as they eagerly and mistakenly attempt to blow me up. But I still feel bullied.

I’m so depressed I just want to go clubbing, drink too much, smoke that extra strong cannabis that’s going around the cabinet and pick up unsuitable girls.

But Dad says it’s not on while the regiment squares up to death on a daily basis. What can I do?Harry, Gloucestershire

Oh Harry, as I said to your grandmother just the other day: “Gardening is its own reward, don’t you agree?” She agreed.

Your father has many acres to toil, so do what the girls did when forced by tradition to avoid combat: they dug for victory. With your help, despite the impending crisis caused by the growing of too many biofuels instead of food crops, we shall never have to face rationing on Duchy Originals.

And don’t worry about being called ginger nut (a lower class of biscuit altogether). It’s just their way of avoiding calling you genuinely hurtful names, like “upper class twat”. Please remind your Granny she’s expected in Lewes to help with the revolution. We’ll book her a room at the White Hart. If she’s worried about being lynched by the Headstrong Club we can loan her the disguise of a red haired wig. Snigger!

Marina Pepper is a former glamour model turned journalist, author, eco-campaigner and Lib Dem politician. A councillor and former Parliamentary candidate, she lives near Brighton with her two children.
Why not e-mail your problems to askmarina@newstatesman.co.uk?

The Brexit Beartraps, #2: Could dropping out of the open skies agreement cancel your holiday?

So what is it this time, eh? Brexit is going to wipe out every banana planet on the entire planet? Brexit will get the Last Night of the Proms cancelled? Brexit will bring about World War Three?

To be honest, I think we’re pretty well covered already on that last score, but no, this week it’s nothing so terrifying. It’s just that Brexit might get your holiday cancelled.

What are you blithering about now?

Well, only if you want to holiday in Europe, I suppose. If you’re going to Blackpool you’ll be fine. Or Pakistan, according to some people...

You’re making this up.

I’m honestly not, though we can’t entirely rule out the possibility somebody is. Last month Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair boss who attracts headlines the way certain other things attract flies, warned that, “There is a real prospect... that there are going to be no flights between the UK and Europe for a period of weeks, months beyond March 2019... We will be cancelling people’s holidays for summer of 2019.”

He’s just trying to block Brexit, the bloody saboteur.

Well, yes, he’s been quite explicit about that, and says we should just ignore the referendum result. Honestly, he’s so Remainiac he makes me look like Dan Hannan.

But he’s not wrong that there are issues: please fasten your seatbelt, and brace yourself for some turbulence.

Not so long ago, aviation was a very national sort of a business: many of the big airports were owned by nation states, and the airline industry was dominated by the state-backed national flag carriers (British Airways, Air France and so on). Since governments set airline regulations too, that meant those airlines were given all sorts of competitive advantages in their own country, and pretty much everyone faced barriers to entry in others.

The EU changed all that. Since 1994, the European Single Aviation Market (ESAM) has allowed free movement of people and cargo; established common rules over safety, security, the environment and so on; and ensured fair competition between European airlines. It also means that an AOC – an Air Operator Certificate, the bit of paper an airline needs to fly – from any European country would be enough to operate in all of them.

Do we really need all these acronyms?

No, alas, we need more of them. There’s also ECAA, the European Common Aviation Area – that’s the area ESAM covers; basically, ESAM is the aviation bit of the single market, and ECAA the aviation bit of the European Economic Area, or EEA. Then there’s ESAA, the European Aviation Safety Agency, which regulates, well, you can probably guess what it regulates to be honest.

All this may sound a bit dry-

It is.

-it is a bit dry, yes. But it’s also the thing that made it much easier to travel around Europe. It made the European aviation industry much more competitive, which is where the whole cheap flights thing came from.

In a speech last December, Andrew Haines, the boss of Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said that, since 2000, the number of destinations served from UK airports has doubled; since 1993, fares have dropped by a third. Which is brilliant.

Brexit, though, means we’re probably going to have to pull out of these arrangements.

Stop talking Britain down.

Don’t tell me, tell Brexit secretary David Davis. To monitor and enforce all these international agreements, you need an international court system. That’s the European Court of Justice, which ministers have repeatedly made clear that we’re leaving.

So: last March, when Davis was asked by a select committee whether the open skies system would persist, he replied: “One would presume that would not apply to us” – although he promised he’d fight for a successor, which is very reassuring.

We can always holiday elsewhere.

Perhaps you can – O’Leary also claimed (I’m still not making this up) that a senior Brexit minister had told him that lost European airline traffic could be made up for through a bilateral agreement with Pakistan. Which seems a bit optimistic to me, but what do I know.

Intercontinental flights are still likely to be more difficult, though. Since 2007, flights between Europe and the US have operated under a separate open skies agreement, and leaving the EU means we’re we’re about to fall out of that, too.

Surely we’ll just revert to whatever rules there were before.

Apparently not. Airlines for America – a trade body for... well, you can probably guess that, too – has pointed out that, if we do, there are no historic rules to fall back on: there’s no aviation equivalent of the WTO.

The claim that flights are going to just stop is definitely a worst case scenario: in practice, we can probably negotiate a bunch of new agreements. But we’re already negotiating a lot of other things, and we’re on a deadline, so we’re tight for time.

In fact, we’re really tight for time. Airlines for America has also argued that – because so many tickets are sold a year or more in advance – airlines really need a new deal in place by March 2018, if they’re to have faith they can keep flying. So it’s asking for aviation to be prioritised in negotiations.

The only problem is, we can’t negotiate anything else until the EU decides we’ve made enough progress on the divorce bill and the rights of EU nationals. And the clock’s ticking.

This is just remoaning. Brexit will set us free.

A little bit, maybe. CAA’s Haines has also said he believes “talk of significant retrenchment is very much over-stated, and Brexit offers potential opportunities in other areas”. Falling out of Europe means falling out of European ownership rules, so itcould bring foreign capital into the UK aviation industry (assuming anyone still wants to invest, of course). It would also mean more flexibility on “slot rules”, by which airports have to hand out landing times, and which are I gather a source of some contention at the moment.

But Haines also pointed out that the UK has been one of the most influential contributors to European aviation regulations: leaving the European system will mean we lose that influence. And let’s not forget that it was European law that gave passengers the right to redress when things go wrong: if you’ve ever had a refund after long delays, you’ve got the EU to thank.

So: the planes may not stop flying. But the UK will have less influence over the future of aviation; passengers might have fewer consumer rights; and while it’s not clear that Brexit will mean vastly fewer flights, it’s hard to see how it will mean more, so between that and the slide in sterling, prices are likely to rise, too.

It’s not that Brexit is inevitably going to mean disaster. It’s just that it’ll take a lot of effort for very little obvious reward. Which is becoming something of a theme.

Still, we’ll be free of those bureaucrats at the ECJ, won’t be?

This’ll be a great comfort when we’re all holidaying in Grimsby.

Jonn Elledge edits the New Statesman's sister site CityMetric, and writes for the NS about subjects including politics, history and Brexit. You can find him on Twitter or Facebook.